Steve Smith (@stevesmith)

Hmmm, interesting point. And thanks for replying politely. I've left the group because I was asked by another member to leave. I respect their wishes. Is there any evidence that air diffuses light? Yeah, water can really play havoc with light, I agree with you there. I remember an experiment at school where we put a pencil in a glass of water and how it bent the light that passed through it and reflected back to our eye. The pencil suddenly appeared to be at a different angle as the part that was above the water line. Plus the ocean depths get darker the deeper you get. But in this case, the atmosphere... and in a vacuum... There have been experiments made in bouncing a laser off the moons surface where a reflector was placed during the first moon landing. And yes, you don't need real expensive equipment to do that experiment yourself. Still, it would be beyond the finances of most people. Out on the ocean, viewability is not infinite. Boats cannot see beyond the curvature of the earth. If the earth was flat wouldn't we be able see 200 miles away with a telescope? We can see the stars, and how high up are they? Surely 200 miles or more? Some need a telescope, but we can still see them. I'm not fully familiar with the flat earth model, so maybe the stars are closer. Everest stand at about 29,000 feet, so what's that, about 6 miles? Some planes can fly at 40,000 feet, at that altitude air gets thin. The only thing that can obstruct view are clouds, whether thick or thin cloud cover. But anyway, those distances are really too small to mean anything, A few other things I want to mention, but I'll research them first so as not to waste your time. Re: your last point, astronauts wore a special suit with a special visor to filter out the extremely harmful UV, otherwise they'd be burnt to a crisp in seconds. As soon as anyone goes beyond the ozone layer, special protection must be used. Without that layer, all life on Earth would die.